With Archaeology and Science Under Assault How Many Allies Do We Have? – Number of People with Archaeology Degrees

A few months ago I posted an estimation of the number of people with Archaeology degrees from US Universities. I have since done quite a bit more research on the subject. My initial estimates are probably too high for undergraduate degrees. But, I also found some associated degrees i.e. CRM, and pushed the data back to 1894- the year the first Archaeology PhD was given out (Add that question to the Antiquity quiz at this year’s TAG conference). I have compiled it all together into a piece for the SAA Archaeological Record (SAAAR) and submitted it last week. I am posting in here for several reasons. One, if you would give feedback I would greatly appreciate it- open peer review as it were – it can only make the final piece better. So please comment below. Also, last time I put something into SAAAR it took a year to be published and I think the reason why this data is important needs to be discussed much sooner than a year from now. If you read the first paragraph you will understand what I mean. So here it is-

With Archaeology and Science Under Assault How Many Allies Do We Have? – Number of People with Archaeology Degrees

Doug Rocks-Macqueen

ScienceInsider has reported that Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), current chair of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is actively looking to cut National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to certain fields by examining grant applications for issues (Mervis 2014). A disturbing trend is that 11 (23%) of the 47 grants receiving the congressmen’s attention were for Archaeology based projects (8 from the Archaeology funding stream and 3 projects that use Archaeological resources). Whether we like it or not, Archaeology is now on the front lines of the War on Science.

I think it would be a mistake to treat this as a war, with a mentality of us versus them. Instead we should look to both strengthen our message as to why Archaeology and Heritage is important to society, and involve more people with it. The more people involved in Archaeology the less likely it is to receive the negative attention of politicians. Public Archaeology is the natural path to obtain that. But, I wondered if we are missing out on a key demographic, those between profession, served by organizations like the SAA or RPA, and the general public, the focus of Public Archaeology efforts.

I am talking about those with Archaeology focused degrees but who are not professionals. They are people who were interested to spend 2, 4, or 10+ years of their life and possibly thousands of dollars earning an Archaeology related degree. They would be a natural group to get involved in the lobby and education of Congress and the wider public about Archaeology and Heritage. We already know they are interested in the topic.

We have long suspected that our Universities produce more people with degrees in Archaeology than there are jobs, but we have no idea how many people have gotten Archaeology focused degrees. Is it 10,000 or 100,000? In this article I will take you through my attempts to determine the size of this group and what the interesting results might mean for Archaeology.

Data, Data, Data, Data

In my search to answer this question I came across three datasets on degrees granted in the United States. Apologies to Canadian, Mexican and archaeologists from other parts of the Americas, this first attempt was aimed at US Universities but I hope to expand the results in the future. Here are the sources:

The American Anthropological Association

The AAA has been tracking the number of undergrad and graduate Anthropology degrees given through their AnthroGuide since 1975. They also have data going back to 1948 (D’Andrade et al 1975). The AAA provided me with data from 1948 to 2009.

The National Science Foundation

The NSF conducts an annual survey of PhD awardees. Some of this data is available online, from 1966 onwards, at WebCASPAR (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/) and data from 1920-1965 can be found is the report, ‘U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century’ (Thurgood et al 2006). But that report states that for the years 1920–57 the dataset unreliable.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Schools that receive federal funding are required to contribute statistics to the NCES and this data can be found online at WebCASPAR, from 1966 onwards. This data, like the AAA data, covers all undergraduate and graduate degrees but also covers associate degrees, certificates, etc. and those degrees that list Anthropology as a second major.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff, Archaeology from Anthropology

The ‘Four Field’ approach to Anthropology in the United States caused problems when gathering accurate statistics. All of these datasets had Archaeology degrees, or as is the case with most US Universities Anthropology degrees with a concentration in Archaeology, classified as general Anthropology degrees and need to be separated out. This was done by taking the percentage of Archaeology students out of all Anthropology students and multiplying it against the datasets.

The American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) Department Surveys has information on Archaeology student percentages going back to the early 1970s (Table 1). Archaeology students make up about 20% of Anthropology undergraduates and 37% of postgraduates. It took some time to figure out why Archaeology majors/concentrations made up a higher percentage of Anthropology postgraduates. Separating out PhD level departments (34% Archaeology) and terminal MA/MSc departments (42%) revealed that there is a much higher demand for MA/MSc degrees in Archaeology. Given the Secretary of Interiors requirement for an MA/MSc to manage CRM projects on government land these percentages make sense, at least for recent numbers.

Table 2: Different sources of the percentages Archaeologists make up of Anthropologists.

With the Departmental Surveys giving different results from year to year it was difficult to settle on the exact percentages to use. Eventually, 20% for undergrads, 38% for MA/MSc and 30% for PhDs were used. With pre-1970 MA/MSc being reduced to PhD levels of 30% on account CRM is likely driving this need and it would not have been there before the 1970s. Even then that change only makes a minor difference in overall numbers.

Results

Taking the three different datasets, and the percentage archaeology majors/concentrations we end up with these results:

Estimated number of US Archaeology degree- undergraudate

Figure 1: BA/BS Archaeology degrees given per years by data source.

Estimated number of US Archaeology degree- postgraduate

Figure 2: Postgraduate Archaeology degrees given per year by data source.

Estimating 1894-1947

It is believed the first Archaeology PhD from a US University, Harvard, was given out to George A. Dorsey in 1894 (Christenson 2011). Unfortunately, between 1895 and 1948 there is poor data on PhDs and no information on Undergraduate and Master’s degrees. We do have the NSF data on PhDs back to 1920 and the number of Anthropology PhDs to 1900 (Rogge 1976). Taking the ratio, in the 1950s, of PhDs to MA/MScs (1 to 2) and BAs (1 to 6) it was possible to estimate the total number degrees from the known PhDs. This added roughly 1000 extra degrees to the final tally, which is actually not that significant in the grand scheme.

Which Numbers Are the Right Ones?

The different data sources line up close to each other but are not exact. You will notice that the AAA numbers tend to differ from the other two sources from the mid-1970s onwards. That is because they include non-US Universities from that point awards, skewing the numbers. Because of this the US government numbers are the more accurate because they cover only US schools. But, the AAA numbers, based on government data pre-1975, go back further. Using a combination of NCES data from 1966 forward (including 2nd majors and other degrees/certificates), the AAA data from 1948-1965, and the estimated numbers from 1894-1947 we get the following results:

PhD

5,848

MA/MSc

16,973

BA/BS

52,896

Other Degrees

1,109

2nd Major

1,789

All Degrees

78,615

Table 3: Estimated number of Archaeology degrees given by US Universities. Unfortunately, there is no information on ‘other’ degrees/certificates before 1983 and no data before 2001 for second majors.

That is a rounded to 79,000 Archaeology majors/concentration degrees given out. At the very least there are roughly 56,000 people with an Archaeology degree. The total number of people with Archaeology degrees is somewhere between these numbers depending on how many people hold multiple archaeology degrees e.g. one person has three Archaeology degrees – a BA, a MA, and a PhD or have only one archaeology degree out of several – BA in chemistry, MA in Archaeology. These are all estimations and the actual number will vary, but I believe with the current knowledge we have about Archaeology as part of Anthropology these estimates are pretty close to the real number.

Archaeology is Anthropology or it is Nothing… or Classics or Art History or Geo-Sciences or….

Anthropology is not the only field that Archaeology can be attached to. At some Universities Archaeology is attached to Art History, Classics, Geosciences, etc. It was possible to get some numbers for Classical/Ancient Studies/Archaeology degrees and Cultural Resource Management (CRM) degrees too (Table 4). Though as Tom King has said many times ‘Archaeology ≠ CRM’. Archaeology is only a component of these degrees and this information is included as a point of interest. At best these associated fields only add a few hundred ‘possibly’ Archaeology-focused degrees to the profession.

2003-2013

Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis

Classical, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and Archaeology

Doctorate Degrees

3

59

Master’s Degrees

236

51

Bachelor’s Degrees

16

1159

Post-Master’s Certificates

8

Post-Baccalaureate Certificates

32

2 But Less Than 4 Year Certificates

1

2nd Major BA

1

275

Table 4: Other associated degrees. Data only from 2003 onwards.

What Are We Going to Do About This?

These are estimates and changing the percentages up or down will add or subtract a few thousand from the total. Still we are looking at 2-3,000 people graduating with Archaeology focused degrees every year and rising. There are an estimated 10-12k professional archaeologists currently working in the US (see Rocks-Macqueen 2014 for discussion on estimating number of Archaeologists) which means that most of these recent graduates will not be able to get a job in professional archaeology. Moreover, the SAA, at 7,000 some members, is not capturing this group. This begs the question: what are they doing and how can we engage with them?

I remember when I graduated from undergrad I had almost no connection to Archaeology until I got a CRM job. From talking with many other graduates I know my experience is not unique. Yet, about half of all BA/BSc Archaeology degrees have been earned since roughly 1996 and half of all PhDs and MAs have been earned since 1992. The majority of Archaeology focused degrees have been earned in the last two decades, decades in which we have had email and the Web. Many new students are broke and cannot afford memberships in societies but surely that can receive an email.

A modest proposal to engage with highly motivated group would be to create a digital community – list server, monthly email of news, etc. Beyond the current gaggle of Facebook groups and specific list serves we currently have. It does not have to be elaborate – simple communication every few months. We could get Universities to sign-up students before they graduate and within a few years have a 10,000 strong community.

This is not the only solution and all other ideas are welcomed. But, we need to start discussing that in the next few decades we will teach more people about archaeology through Universities than we have in the last hundred years. What are we doing about this fact to make archaeology better?

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the AAA for providing me with some of the data used here. Thank you also everyone who reviewed this piece and gave me feedback.

Doug. I think it is a great idea to capture and re-engage this group of people:

1) I think the first step in that direction is a very important mental step that rests solely in our court as practicing professional archaeologists. It goes back to the old social issue of how we see ourselves in social context vs. how we see others in social context—and how we define those ways of “seeing.”

I think we need to turn over a new page and change what has always seemed to me to be a destructive and self-impaling attitude in professional archaeology. Whether we would like to admit it or not, one of the cultural things i picked up in undergraduate and graduate school in the 1970s and early 1980s was a very strong and longstanding historical belief that a person with a B.A. or B.S. in archaeology was not a full-fledged archaeologist. Sure. They might excavate squares, they might sort lithics in a laboratory, or they might even be listed with the official title “Archaeologist” in Department of Human Resources records. However, despite all that, there was an overall tendency to negatively objectify these nice and often very talented people as “Junior G-Men.” (You may remember the silver-plastic Junior G-Man Badges and toy guns for sale in Five-and-Dime stores in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s) Only people with graduate degrees could REAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS. If you had a B.A. or B.S. in archaeology, but could not find a job in archaeology or chose to do some other kind of work, you were persona non grata, a nobody, someone easily forgotten with the passage of time. As W.C. Fields said in his famous movie line, “Get out of here kid. You bother me.”

It might be a little less bad these days—but not by too much. Personally, I have a real problem—a real problem—with anthropology and archaeology professors who encourage kids to major in their discipline as undergraduates (knowing doggone well most of them will never get graduate degrees) so they can keep classes full to keep their job. When the kids graduate, most of them toddle off into life to be forgotten by those professors—who are focused on a new batch of kids. I think this is morally unconscionable.

If I were an archaeology professor at a university, every kid who ever sat in one of my classes (major or nonmajor) would be important to me for the rest of my life—and I would care about their future and their continuing engagement with the world of archaeology. If that offends someone—tough darts. I am sentimental like that and do not apologize for it.

2) I had a personal experience this past summer that was something of an epiphany for me—and it goes back to this social context issue again—in this case how the B.A. or B.S. in archaeology who does not work in archaeology sees themselves—as opposed to how former professors and professional archaeologists see them.

It was on a Saturday, and I had gone to a library to do some background research to support some archaeological fieldwork that was underway. The library I was in suddenly closed, and I was forced to flee to another nearby library. When I got there, I spied a very nice young woman sitting at the reference desk. I mentioned that I was an archaeologist, that I was doing some interesting fieldwork in the area, and that I needed to look at some specific reference sources—if she had them. She did and very nicely helped me to lay hands on them. She then went away to do some unrelated task while I buried my head deep into a book. Then after a few minutes, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her kind of hovering, shy, and afraid a short distance away. I glanced up, smiled, and said, “Hi. Could i help you with something?”

She looked at me shyly and said, “What kind of archaeological research are you doing locally? Is it something really interesting?” I explained it in pretty good synoptic detail. She then looked down and said, “Well, I was an undergraduate archaeology major in college but never ended up getting a job in archaeology. So, I work part-time here in the library now.” I detected a pervasive sense of disappointment in her life—a sense of something once happy and important to her that just did not work out. It was as if her soul was saying, “Could I come and play in your sandbox for a while. It would make me feel so vital and alive again?” We talked for quite a while. I felt like shedding tears.

Clearly, it seemed to me, she was viewing herself as an archaeologist—regardless of how some former professors might be viewing her She had a heart that still wanted vital engagement with archaeology in a meaningful and fulfilling way—but she saw no clear pathway to do that in her current life circumstances. Although she did not say so outright, my perception was that she felt as if she had given four years of her life to a major in American anthropology/archaeology and had then been thrown away like a piece of trash once her degree was in hand.

I think archaeology is enticing in a unique way— a way that grabs one’s heart and holds it for a lifetime. Based on this anecdotal epiphany, I would bet there are many 1000s of B.A. and B.S. degree holders in archaeology (and even just students who took and loved only a few archaeology courses) who do other work for a living now, but would jump at a chance to be vitally engaged with archaeology across their lifetime in some practical and sustainable ways—ways that would advance archaeology and cut deeply into the harmful agenda of Representative Lamar Smith.

However, and I would issue this caution, this renewed engagement with people who still see themselves as archaeologists (even if no one else does) needs to be done in a real, sincere, caring, and heartfelt way. It MUST NOT be a selfish program of using people like pawns on a chess board to achieve some political objective. We are dealing with hearts here—hearts for archaeology—hearts that need to be handled with care and love.

Nope, still a problem. RPA- register of professional archaeologists requires an MA. Secretary of Interiors regulations for PI’s, you guessed it, an MA. I had an interesting experience recently that I will email you about.

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